SPOILER ALERT!
FREAKS 1932
Freaks 1932 is exactly the kind of film that demands a sensitive, deep dive at The Last Drive In- not just because of its notoriety or its place in horror history, but because it’s a work that still challenges, unsettles, and provokes nearly a century after its release. This film is more than just a curiosity; it’s a cinematic canvas for projection, a piece of art that forces us to confront our biases and the boundaries of empathy, spectacle, and exploitation. I want to peel back the layers of Browning’s legacy, the lived experiences of the cast, and the film’s turbulent journey from reviled oddity to revered classic. I will most likely do a double feature with the following film, Chaney’s The Unknown 1927.
Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) stands as a defiant anomaly in cinematic history- a film that dared to confront societal norms with unflinching audacity, only to be rejected by its era before being resurrected as a cult masterpiece. Born from Browning’s own circus past and his fascination with the marginalized, the film is a haunting blend of horror and humanity, a narrative that forces viewers to grapple with their discomfort while paradoxically humanizing those deemed “monstrous.”
Set in a traveling circus, the story centers on Cleopatra, a venomous trapeze artist who seduces the wealthy little person (midget was a term used during the Victorian era through much of the 20th century and has roots that many find dehumanizing and derogatory), Hans, conspiring with her lover Hercules (Henry Victor) to poison him and seize his fortune.
When the titular “freaks” uncover her betrayal, they exact a revenge as visceral as it is poetic, transforming her into a grotesque spectacle-a chicken-woman hybrid-in one of cinema’s most chilling finales. It is still a challenging scene to take in. Browning, fresh off the success of Dracula (1931), aimed to out-horror Universal’s monsters by casting real sideshow performers: conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, microcephalic Schlitzie, limbless Johnny Eck, and others. These were not actors in makeup but individuals whose bodies defied societal ideals, a choice that shattered the fourth wall of voyeuristic spectacle.
The production was steeped in contradiction. MGM, the studio of glamour, greenlit Browning’s vision but balked at its execution. The cast, proud, flawed, and fiercely individual, were sequestered in tents, barred from the studio commissary after F. Scott Fitzgerald reportedly vomited upon seeing the Hilton sisters dine. Yet Browning, himself a carny at heart, treated them with camaraderie, even as their professional rivalries flared.
Cinematographer Merritt B. Gerstad’s stark framing oscillates between empathy and unease: close-ups linger on the freaks’ laughter and camaraderie, while wide shots emphasize their Otherness amidst the carnival’s shadows. “We accept her, we accept her, one of us, one of us. Gooble gobble, gooble gobble. We accept her, we accept her, one of us, one of us!”
This duality mirrors the film’s core tension: Is it exploitation or empowerment? Contemporary audiences recoiled, branding it “grotesque” and “brutal.” MGM slashed the runtime from 90 to 64 minutes, excising scenes like the original “happy ending” where the freaks are wealthy and integrated into society. The studio’s promotional tagline-“Can a full-grown woman love a midget?”– underscored their cynical marketing, even as Browning insisted on the characters’ humanity. Critics lambasted it; The New York Times called it “so revolting it becomes interesting,” while British censors banned it for 30 years. The backlash crippled Browning’s career, leaving him a recluse until his death in 1962.
Yet Freaks refused to die. Rediscovered in the 1960s by countercultural audiences and European cinephiles, it was hailed as a subversive triumph. Derek Malcolm later deemed it “one of the masterpieces of baroque cinema,” a “damning antidote to the cult of physical perfection.” Its moral clarity, the true monsters are the “normal.”
Cleopatra and Hercules resonated with postmodern sensibilities, reframing it as a radical indictment of societal cruelty. The National Film Registry enshrined it in 1994, recognizing its raw power to unsettle and illuminate. Today, Freaks endures as a Rorschach test: a horror film that terrifies not with monsters but with its demand that we see ourselves in the Other. Browning’s legacy, once buried by outrage, now rests on this audacious paradox- a film that mirrors our capacity for both revulsion and redemption.
Browning should have lived to witness the admiration his work now receives, celebrated for the very qualities once met with skepticism, pushed to the margins, and misunderstood. Now, his work is cherished by generations who have found the poetry in it. Recognized for its bravery and artistry, it’s celebrated for the very things that once made it so controversial.
Beneath the canvas shadows of a traveling circus, Freaks unfolds like a fever dream- a wondrous and cruel world where the margins of humanity are drawn and redrawn in sawdust and candlelight. Hans stands at the heart of the narrative, a gentle-souled little person, whose devotion to the radiant trapeze artist Cleopatra becomes the axis of tragedy. Cleopatra, all glitter and guile, toys with Hans’s affections, her laughter a blade that slices through the fragile peace of the sideshow community. Her secret lover, the brutish strongman Hercules, is her co-conspirator, and together they hatch a plan to poison Hans and steal his inheritance, their “normalcy” masking a monstrous intent.
Russian actress Olga Baclanova, with her striking, statuesque looks and commanding presence, specialized in portraying exotic, seductive femme fatales, often exuding a blend of glamour and cruelty that made her a natural fit for the role of the manipulative trapeze artist Her acting style was expressive and theatrical, shaped by her roots in Russian silent cinema, where she was known as the “Russian Tigress.” Baclanova’s other most famous film is The Man Who Laughs (1928), in which she plays the alluring and morally ambiguous Duchess Josiana opposite Conrad Veidt’s tragic hero.
The circus is alive with its own poetry: the Bearded Lady cradles her newborn, the conjoined Hilton twins share a dance, and the “Living Torso” lights a cigarette with matchstick precision. These moments of everyday tenderness and camaraderie glimmer between the cracks of spectacle, their humanity rendered in gestures both small and profound.
But the heart of the film beats loudest at the infamous wedding feast- a raucous, rain-soaked banquet where the “freaks,” in a chorus of unity, chant hoisting a loving cup, “One of us! One of us!” to welcome Cleopatra. Their joy curdles as she recoils in horror, hurling wine and insults, her revulsion echoing throughout the world. Cleopatra recoils in disgust and unleashes her infamous tirade at the assembled performers: “You dirty, slimy, freaks! Freaks, freaks, freaks! You fools! Make me one of you, will you?”
From that moment, the air thickens with dread. Hans, now gravely ill, is watched over by the ever-vigilant freaks, their childlike innocence replaced by a silent, collective resolve. Storm clouds gather as the circus caravans roll through the mud, the freaks crawling and slithering beneath the wagons, knives glinting in the darkness. Cleopatra’s attempt to finish her deadly work is thwarted; confronted by Hans and his protectors, she flees into the tempest, pursued by a crawling, relentless legion-“Offend one and you offend them all.” Hercules, meanwhile, meets his own fate at the hands of those he scorned, his screams lost in the rain.
The film’s final vision is pure nightmare poetry: Cleopatra, once the “Peacock of the Air,” is now a grotesque “human chicken,” tarred and feathered, her limbs mutilated, her beauty erased, squawking for the gawking crowds. The true monsters, Browning insists, are not those born different, but those who wield cruelty as a weapon.
In a quiet coda, Hans, shattered by guilt and loss, is visited by his former fiancée Frieda, who absolves him with a whispered “I love you,” the film’s last, redemptive breath. Frieda, portrayed with luminous tenderness by Daisy Earles, is the gentle soul of Freaks- her unwavering compassion, quiet dignity, and deep loyalty shine through every glance and gesture, embodying the film’s heart with a softness that endures even in the face of heartbreak and betrayal.
Freaks is a dark carnival ballad- a tale of innocence betrayed, vengeance wrought, and the fragile, luminous dignity of those the world would rather not see. Its images linger like the echo of a distant calliope: rain on canvas, knives in mud, and the mournful, unblinking gaze of those who have survived both spectacle and scorn.
THE UNKNOWN 1927
In the shadowed heart of the silent era, The Unknown (1927) emerges as a feverish, poetic symphony of obsession, deception, and bodily sacrifice- a film that distills the essence of both Lon Chaney’s transformative genius and Tod Browning’s fascination with the grotesque margins of humanity. Their sixth collaboration, set beneath the swirling canvas of a Spanish gypsy circus, is a haunting meditation on the lengths to which we will mutilate ourselves for love, and the dark ironies that fate reserves for those who dare to defy their own nature.
Lon Chaney, the “Man of a Thousand Faces,” delivers one of his most astonishing performances as Alonzo the Armless, a carnival knife-thrower whose act is as much a masquerade as it is a marvel. Chaney’s mastery of physical transformation- here achieved not with elaborate makeup but with a torturous harness that binds his arms to his torso- transcends mere illusion. He eats, drinks, smokes, and performs with his feet, conjuring a portrait of extraordinary characterization that is both mesmerizing and deeply unsettling. Yet Alonzo’s greatest secret is not his apparent lack of arms, but the double thumb on his left hand- a telltale mark of his criminal past. In a world where identity is a matter of survival, he hides his arms not only from the circus audience but from the law, his love, and ultimately, himself.
The object of his desperate longing is Nanon, played by a luminous, eighteen-year-old Joan Crawford in her first major role. Nanon’s beauty is shadowed by a pathological fear of men’s hands- a trauma that renders her vulnerable to Alonzo’s armless embrace and repulsed by the touchy advances of Malabar the Strongman (Norman Kerry). The circus becomes a stage for psychological theater: Alonzo’s knife-throwing act is both a courtship and a dance with death, the blade spinning ever closer to the woman he adores, as if love itself were a matter of precision and restraint.
Browning’s direction, paired with Merritt B. Gerstad’s painterly cinematography, imbues the film with a suffocating, dreamlike atmosphere. Characters drift toward and away from the camera, their movements echoing the dizzying choreography of the circus ring. The world is a carousel of blurred passions and hidden wounds, where every gesture is freighted with meaning and every secret is a ticking bomb.
The revelation of Alonzo’s arms-unstrapped in the privacy of his caravan by his loyal dwarf assistant Cojo (John George)-is a moment of almost unbearable intimacy, a stripping away of both physical and emotional armor.
Spare yet loaded with symbolic weight, the film’s narrative spirals toward its infamous climax. When Nanon’s father, the ringmaster Zanzi (Nick De Ruiz), discovers Alonzo’s secret, he is murdered in a fit of panic, witnessed only by Nanon, who sees the killer’s double thumb but not his face. To ensure both his freedom and Nanon’s love, Alonzo conceives a plan of almost mythic self-destruction: he blackmails a surgeon into amputating his arms for real, believing this sacrifice will make him worthy of Nanon’s affection and erase the evidence of his crime.
But fate, in Browning’s universe, is never so kind. During Alonzo’s convalescence, Malabar’s gentle persistence cures Nanon’s phobia, and Alonzo returns to find the woman he mutilated himself for now happily in the arms of another.
The final act is a Grand Guignol ballet of revenge and despair. Alonzo, unhinged by jealousy and loss, sabotages Malabar’s circus act, only to be crushed- literally and figuratively- by the very forces he sought to control. The image of Chaney’s Alonzo, weeping in agony as he realizes the futility of his sacrifice, is among the most emotionally raw in silent cinema, a tableau of unrequited love rendered as emotional amputation.
Burt Lancaster would later call it “one of the most compelling and emotionally exhausting scenes I have ever seen an actor do.”
Chaney’s legacy, forged in the crucible of films like The Unknown, is that of an artist who made suffering visible, who found nobility in the grotesque and pathos in the monstrous. His performances, whether as Quasimodo, the Phantom, or Alonzo, are not simply exercises in shock but in empathy- a reminder, as Chaney himself wrote, that “the lowest types of humanity may have within them the capacity for supreme self-sacrifice.”
Browning, too, is revealed here as a poet of the abnormal, a director who understood that the circus ring is a mirror for the human soul, its dramas both larger than life and achingly intimate.
The Unknown was met with both fascination and revulsion upon release. Critics marveled at Chaney’s virtuosity-his ability to eat, drink, and smoke with his feet, his wrenching facial expressions unmasked by makeup-and recoiled from the film’s “gruesome” subject matter.
Modern audiences and scholars have reclaimed it as a masterpiece of psychological horror and silent cinema, its influence echoing through the decades in the work of directors drawn to the intersection of body and identity, love and mutilation.
To watch The Unknown is to enter a world where love is a knife’s edge, where the boundaries of the self are as mutable as the shadows under the big top, and where the true horror is not in disfigurement but in the lengths we go to be seen, to be loved, and to belong. It is a film that lingers like a phantom limb, a testament to the enduring power of Chaney’s artistry and Browning’s dark, poetic vision.
